2014 field season underway

With three visits to Puffin Island in the past week, the
2014 Puffin Island field season is well underway. After a mildly frustrating
delay due to weather (wind as always), last week we were able to make the short,
yet potentially troublesome crossing from Penmon to the Island to get things rolling.

The focus of this year’s work will be largely similar to
last year. I will continue to study the kittiwakes as part of my PhD, GPS
tracking of Guillemots and Razorbills for the RSPB will continue (as carried
out by Steve Dodd), and again we will have our Shag productivity plot; the data
from which feeds in to the JNCC’s Seabird Monitoring Programme.

One major addition to our work this year however, is a
full-island gull survey. This is being led by Nicola Fairweather from The
University of Liverpool and will form her Master’s thesis. This is a gull
survey with a bit of a twist, in that she will be using a differential
GPS system to map nests. The specifics of this piece of kit aren't too clear to
me, however I do know that it results in us being able to map individual Herring,
Lesser black-backed, and Greater Black-backed gull nests to sub-centimetre
accuracy. Pretty impressive indeed!

One part of the differential GPS system.

As impressive as this piece of kit is, it
is also pretty damn heavy, and lugging it up the remnants of the track we used
last year (now reclaimed by the vegetation), was a bit of a shock to the system
for all involved. As I write this, the survey is two-thirds complete, with one more
day of field work for next week currently scheduled.

During the gull census I managed to slink off to set up the
remote cameras I use to monitor the kittiwakes. The cliffs are still a bit
quiet, with it seeming to be quite early for the kittiwakes at the moment. There
are some encouraging early breeding signs, with the beginnings of nests having
been formed and individuals displaying some site fidelity when disturbed. This
year I've set up five remote cameras, pointed at small sub-colonies on the
island (up to 10 nests in each field of view), which have been programmed to
capture an image once every four minutes 24/7. So the data are rolling in, although
sorting through all the images is something I’d rather not think about for now.

A pair of kittiwakes, hopefully getting ready to breed.

We also managed to set up our shag productivity plot. This
consists of a sample of 30 nests which we have numbered and photographed. We
will monitor the fate of these nests throughout the season. Currently a couple
of nests contain very young chicks, but most of the shags are at the incubation
stage, including one nest with five eggs in. If all hatch, the parents are sure
to have a handful!

Jon Green marking a Shag nest. The hand gesture relates to the number of eggs present. To my knowledge it is not a gang related sign...

The five egg nest.

There must be a significantly lighter female shag flying around out there.

On Thursday Steve Dodd had a good look around the Guillemot
and Razorbill breeding sites. Unfortunately the
news isn’t great; a rough visual estimate puts adult numbers down by
approximately a quarter to a third, with some nesting ledges looking
particularly bare. This isn't completely unexpected, and fits in with the
narrative of the strong winter storms around the UK resulting in large numbers
of auks being wrecked. Steve informs me that the number of rings recovered from
Puffin Island birds were particularly high at the start of this year in
comparison to other years. We will
continue to monitor these numbers, including a boat based count of nesting auk
numbers later in the year. This survey is carried out annually, and should hopefully
help us put a number on the change in adults present.

One of the Guillemot ledges

So all in all, it’s been quite a busy few days with progress
having been made already (especially with the gull survey). After last year’s
poor Kittiwake breeding season, and the winter storms seeming to have affected
the auks, how it turns out will certainly be interesting. Let’s hope it’s successful
for birds and researchers alike.